head to head · open source
Ladybird vs badssl.com
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars, 3,194 forks, 535 open issues and last shipped yesterday. badssl.com has 3,056 stars, 205 forks, 210 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Ladybird leads on adoption by 2,086% (66,807 vs 3,056 stars). Ladybird is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; badssl.com is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. Ladybird has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, badssl.com 7%. Ladybird was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Ladybird | badssl.com | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 67K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 205 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ladybird if
- You weight community size — 67K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick badssl.com if
- You want the badssl.com feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and badssl.com fits your workflow better
About Ladybird
Ladybird Ladybird is a truly independent web browser, using a novel engine based on web standards. [!IMPORTANT] Ladybird is in a pre alpha state, and only suitable for use by developers Features We aim to build a complete, usable browser for the modern web. Ladybird uses a multi process architecture with a main UI process, several WebContent renderer processes, an ImageDecoder process, and a RequestServer process. Image decoding and network connections are done out of process to be more robust against malicious content. Each tab has its own renderer process, which is sandboxed from the rest of the system. At the…
read the full Ladybird overview →
About badssl.com
Visit badssl.com for a list of test subdomains, including: self signed.badssl.com expired.badssl.com mixed.badssl.com rc4.badssl.com hsts.badssl.com Server Setup Stock Ubuntu VM, DNS A records for badssl.com. and .badssl.com. pointing to the VM. Testing and development 1. Follow the instructions to install Docker. 2. Clone into the badssl repo by running git clone && cd badssl.com . 3. In order to access the various badssl subdomains locally you will need to add them to your system hosts file. Run make list hosts and copy and paste the output into /etc/hosts . 4. Start Docker by running make serve . 5. You can…
read the full badssl.com overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ladybird or badssl.com more popular?
Ladybird has 66,807 GitHub stars and badssl.com has 3,056. Ladybird has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ladybird and badssl.com free?
Both are open source. Ladybird is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and badssl.com under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ladybird and badssl.com?
Ladybird is written in C++ and badssl.com in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ladybird or badssl.com?
Choose Ladybird if you want the larger community (66,807 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose badssl.com if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.